Corpse-Free Reincarnation

Beneath a velvet-black sky, three moons scattered their pale light over an ancient temple.

On the altar inside the temple stood an old-fashioned statue of a god.

In the darkness, a consciousness that had been submerged for who knew how long slowly awakened.

"Who am I...?"

"I'm Jiang Luo..."

"Wasn't I dead? Where is this?"

Before Jiang Luo could sort out his thoughts, hazy images and scattered fragments surfaced in his mind.

"May the spirit of our Progenitor in heaven bless us..."

"Majestic Emperor Luo, who gazes upon the earth below, gather the earth's spirits and send down gentle winds and rain..."

"Great and glorious Primordial Ancestor, wise and divine, you led our people from west to east, and extended your might through conquest..."

"Both our countries share the divine bloodline of Luo. Why not turn our weapons into plowshares and make peace...?"

"Emperor Luo was the ancestor of the Luo Clan and the first ancient emperor. He created the first pictographic script. During his reign, he sowed the seeds of grains and plants, made clothes and hats, built boats and carts, established musical scales, and vigorously developed production..."

Those layers of fragments, indistinct figures, and murmured stories in his ears carried the weight of thousands of years of memories, surging toward him all at once.

After who knew how long, Jiang Luo finally freed his mind from that mighty river of historical information.

Unnoticed, his soul had already left the statue and the Luo Ancestor Temple. It drifted through the night sky, floating as if he had ascended to immortality.

Looking down at the countless lights below, Jiang Luo sighed. "Damn, what a useless cheat!"

When he had first transmigrated here, he'd suffered more than he could say, yet he hadn't found a cheat.

More precisely, he had found something that might have been one: an ancient, unmarked seal.

Unfortunately, no matter whether he tried to bind it with his blood or nurture it against his body, the damned seal never reacted.

In the end, he'd spent decades as a chieftain in a primitive tribe, then died of old age.

He hadn't expected the cheat to activate only after his death.

Jiang Luo was now in a pure soul state. He could clearly "see" a small, ancient seal with no writing or patterns deep within his soul.

Inside the seal was a space, and within that space was a white sun.

A closer look revealed that the white "sun" was actually composed of countless hair-thin white threads, like a silkworm cocoon.

The moment Jiang Luo saw those white threads, he understood. Each strand was a wisp of prayer power.

Prayer power condensed from faith!

It was the accumulation of thousands of years since his death.

Jiang Luo hadn't expected the tribe he'd once led to grow like a snowball after his death, becoming the first to enter the imperial era.

They had also honored him, their first chieftain, as "Emperor Luo," and named themselves the Luo Clan.

Though the Luo Clan's kingdom had risen and fallen several times since then, it had never vanished. It had even been the first to launch an industrial revolution, later colonizing and unifying the entire planet.

And worship of him, the ancestor of the Luo Clan, had never ceased. The title "Emperor Luo" had even evolved from a posthumous imperial title into the name of the supreme deity in their mythology.

"What is this...?"

Jiang Luo frowned slightly. He could sense an incomparably terrifying presence, somewhere beyond the veil, trying to erode and wear away his soul.

The wisps of white prayer power inside the seal deep within his soul spread through him, sustaining his existence and counteracting that unseen erosion.

"That must be the laws governing the universe's operation—or perhaps the even greater Supreme Rule?"

In the Swallowed Star universe, he'd never heard of a soul leaving its body and existing on its own. That had to be because the rules didn't allow it.

The fact that his soul had endured for thousands of years was clearly the result of continuously consuming prayer power.

"So the reason I've awakened is that I've run short of prayer power to offset the consumption and have started burning through my reserves?"

Through the Wordless Seal, Jiang Luo could sense the source of the faith.

The faith flowing toward him really had dwindled to a trickle, like a stream feeding a pool on the verge of drying up.

"I see..." Jiang Luo couldn't help sighing.

Though he was the Progenitor of the Luo Clan and the supreme god "Emperor Luo" in their mythology, this planet was no longer in ancient times.

After entering the technological age, faith in figures like him—rooted in ancestor worship and pantheism—had naturally declined long ago.

His status remained revered, but few people truly believed in him anymore.

He was more of a historical and cultural symbol. Even the incense offered at his Luo Ancestor Temple and Imperial Temple paled in comparison with that of other religions.

Fortunately, the Wordless Seal had accumulated a considerable amount of prayer power over thousands of years. Even with his reserves dwindling, they could probably sustain his soul for several hundred years.

But now that Jiang Luo understood what prayer power could do, every needless expenditure pained him. He wasn't about to sit back and live off his reserves.

"I have to hurry and possess a body!"

Once his soul had a physical body to rely on, it would no longer face erosion from the laws governing the universe's operation.

Jiang Luo drifted to the nearest big city and went straight through the walls of a hospital.

But he passed through several pregnant women in succession, and nothing happened.

Clearly, "possessing a body" wasn't as simple as he'd made it sound.

Even though he was "Emperor Luo," who had received offerings for thousands of years, he hadn't become a god through worship. The rules of the Origin Continent's Source World didn't allow it either; otherwise, the universe would be packed with gods sustained by faith.

In essence, he was just a relatively powerful soul, and he could maintain his existence only by constantly consuming prayer power.

"Looks like I'll need a possession technique..." Jiang Luo sighed.

Where was he supposed to find one?

Five thousand years ago, when he was still a chieftain, he'd been an ordinary mortal. Otherwise, he wouldn't have died in frustration.

Then he made a "great vow": "Please manifest a possession technique suitable for me to use right now, safe and free of hidden drawbacks, and requiring little prayer power."

The greatest use of the prayer power inside the Wordless Seal was that it could manifest supernatural abilities and cultivation techniques from novels, comics, and other works he'd heard of or seen in his previous life.

The manifested techniques and abilities would also be modified to comply with the Supreme Rule of the Source World he was in.

It was practically a case of wishing for something and having it come true: the greater the imagination, the greater the power.

The only limitation was the prayer power required.

With the little prayer power he'd accumulated over the thousands of years since his death, there was no chance he could manifest something like the Golden Chapter of Primordial Beginning, the Sutra of the Heavenly Emperor, the Art of Self-Transformation, or Dao Seeking of Chaos Origin.

That was why Jiang Luo cherished every bit of prayer power he'd accumulated.

As he made his "great vow," the white sun in the Wordless Seal's inner space instantly shrank by a tenth.

Countless strands of white prayer power evaporated in an instant, vanishing into some unseen presence.

Then a stream of information surfaced in his mind.

Corpse-Free Reincarnation

--Transfers the soul into a vessel's body. After reincarnation through this technique, the user must suppress the vessel's soul, and there is a risk of the body rejecting them. Using a fetus as the vessel eliminates the risk of rejection and removes the need to change vessels.

Jiang Luo's heart leapt with joy. The Wordless Seal is pretty clever after all.

His memories from his previous life were like a treasure trove of techniques and supernatural abilities, but he couldn't decide how much prayer power it would take to manifest any given one.

Nor could he know in advance how well a technique or ability would turn out once adapted to the Supreme Rule of the Origin Continent's Source World, or whether it would suit him.

So the best approach was to make a direct request to the Wordless Seal and let it filter the options, then give him the result that best matched his requirements.